


20 Random Facts about Roy Harper

by zarabithia



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Drabble Series, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Pre-New 52
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-17
Updated: 2007-10-17
Packaged: 2019-05-27 01:20:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15013574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarabithia/pseuds/zarabithia
Summary: A series of drabbles/ficlets about Roy's life.





	20 Random Facts about Roy Harper

1\. There are two people he wanted to raise Lian with - Dick and Donna. Donna he would have married, if she had loved him back, and Dick he would still welcome back into their life if Dick gave any indication that's what he wanted.

2\. The first six months after Roy brings Lian home, he is determined to find his biological mother to give Lian the kind of family connection she deserves. The first real lead, not surprisingly, comes from Robbie, and Roy sits staring at the phone, with a napping baby girl in his arms, certain he wants to dial the number Robbie gave him for a full hour. A phone call from Dinah comes before Roy gathers any courage, and the phone number is placed in the back of his phone book to be dialed another day.

Roy still has the phone book, years old at this point, and the number still sits, never dialed, in the back of the book.

3\. Every other Tuesday, whenever she is able, Dinah stops by and brings him and Lian a plate full of homemade brownies. Tradition holds that he loves them so much they are devoured before Lian can get home from school.

In truth, Roy is continually certain that Dinah has mislabeled her salt and sugar, and he is certain that brownies aren't actually supposed to cause you to chip a tooth. But eating them all in one sitting is better than hurting the feelings of the woman he loves most or allowing the truth to accidentally slip out of a four-year-old's mouth.

4\. He isn't surprised when Donna reveals that she'd just been using him because she needed a "bad boy." But it hurts Roy as much as every one of the times Ollie had walked out the door all those years ago _combined_. To this day, it's not something he's _over_. The little boy who watched his father walk away, and teenager who watched Ollie do the same, won't let him ever forget that the woman he'd wanted to be Lian's mother walked away from him too, because he _wasn't good enough_ for her.

5\. After Donna's death, her words come back and hurt him all over again. Not just because they lost her, but because he figures that if he had been more of a Titan, something more important to the team than just "the bad boy," he'd be able to pull Dick out of the all consuming misery that his friend enters after Donna's death.

6\. If he could do so, he would gladly give his life so that Donna could have lived instead of him. It would have hurt Lian, but the _Titans_ would have survived. His family would have gone on, and the nightmares that plague Lian every night because of what Tanner did to her never would have happened.

Dick would have been better off.

7\. There are two people that Roy knows he could kill and never have any remorse for having done so. The first is Tanner for hurting Lian. The second is Slade Wilson, for the Renegade nonsense that Roy blames squarely on Deathstroke.

8\. The day Dinah tells him about the torture she endured, Roy wishes he could kill the men responsible. He also wishes he was strong enough to be the kind of support she needs, as she had been with him. Instead, he collapses next to her on the couch.

She never brings it up to him again, and Roy wishes he was a better man, the kind that Dinah could trust to be strong as much as he trusts her.

9\. The first man he ever actually fantasizes about _isn't_ Dick. It's Hal. It's a short leap, from jerking off to mental images of Hal to letting his mind wander to his best friend. But short leap or no, it takes Roy time to process the fact...and to accept that Robin the Boy Wonder, the perfect sidekick, might ever want anything to do with him.

10\. The night that Jade takes over leadership of the Outsiders, Kory and Roy have sex for the first time. It isn't planned, and both of them know that the other is using them as an outlet for the man they can't reach. Both of them know this, and neither of them will ever tell Dick. Kory's afraid Dick will be hurt; Roy's afraid he won't be.

11\. Every year since Connor came into their life, Ollie shows up on what is the anniversary of their falling out with a twelve pack and the two of them proceed to get as drunk as possible in a bizarre sort of bonding ritual that Roy knows wouldn't make sense to anyone but them.

During the time that Ollie is gone, Connor takes his place, and one drunken anniversary session becomes a deflowering session instead.

12\. Roy is happy for his brother for finding love with Kyle, but he can't look across the Queen dining room table without remembering exactly how good a pair of short pants Kyle could conjure with his ring...

13\. The day of Impulse's funeral is a solemn one, spent alone, leafing through an old scrap book of pictures of _his_ team. It's a day that one might expect him to be morose, and to finally be able to understand how Dick had felt when Donna died. But instead, Roy is proud of the man Imp grew up to be, and he can't for one second imagine dishonoring the sacrifice Bart made by tossing in the towel on the surviving teammates that depend upon him. That isn't to say that he doesn't feel guilty for not having Imp's back, because every day after Bart's death, looking at Wally hurts in a way that it never had before.

14\. Shortly after Jason dies, Roy sits on the other side of two hour conversation in which his best friend takes all the guilt in the world for something that isn't his fault. Years later, when he meets Connor for the first time, he remembers that conversation. He's never mentioned to Dick that the crappy relationship he had with his own brother is directly responsible for the relaxed relationship Roy and Connor have.

15\. Despite how much he loves his little brother, one of Roy's worse non-Tanner nightmares features Connor as Speedy instead of him.

16\. Roy doesn't regret Cheshire. At all. Because regretting Cheshire would mean regretting Lian, and Roy can't do that.

17\. After Donna's death, Diana is the last person Roy expects to show up at his door. But she shows up anyway, arms full of personal items that she thought he would want, that she thought Donna would want him to have.  Roy knows a lot of people think he is a jerk, and some might even think he is an asshole in the grand tradition of his womanizing father. But a month's worth of torture couldn't get him to reveal what happened behind closed doors between himself and a grieving Amazon princess.

18\. The first time he has sex with a man isn't exactly what he would call consensual; it's "offered" as "payment" for a fix he can't quite afford. It takes him years to get over that, and if it hadn't been for Dick, he's not sure he ever would have been able to.

19\. The first time he meets Tim Drake, Roy is pretty close to terrified. The hero worship of Dick, the way the body fills out the uniform, the way the bottom lip turns inward and is nibbled on while the boy talks...it all screams the kind of temptation that makes heroin seem like over the counter cough syrup.  He makes a conscious decision to stay away from the youngest Robin after that first meeting, lest any further encounters weaken his resolve to not take what he thinks would very easily be offered.

20\. Much as he loves Ollie and Dinah, he's long since stopped believing that "Mom" and "Dad" can be happy together. He wishes that wasn't the case, but for their own good, he knows that they are better apart. On the day of their wedding, he just hopes the latest round of togetherness doesn't hurt his family as much as the last attempt did.


End file.
